Tanabata
by FadedLace
Summary: It's Tanabata, but Mokuba doesn't believe in miracles anymore... explanation of tanabata inside NoaMokubashounenaiish


Title: Tanabata

Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh

Rating: G for confusingness

Word Count: 756, not including the story information

Explanation: Tanabata: Tanabata is the Japanese star festival. It is based on the legend of the seven sisters who wove the night sky. One of the sisters went down to earth one day and fell in love with a man who lived there. They got married and were so happy together that the woman forgot to go back into the sky to weave the night sky. So the sun stayed out forever and made crops die and people get sick. As punishment, the gods sent the man to one side of the Milky Way and the woman to the other. Legend says that they can only see each other once a year, on July 7, which is called Tanabata. The man and the woman are based on the stars Vega and Altair. On Tanabata, it is a custom for people to write their wish on a piece of paper and tie it to a bamboo tree.

Warnings: Depressingness, shounen ai

Authors note: I've always thought it was ironic that Mokuba was born on Tanabata. Don't you? Also, this story is set 6 years after the Noa arc (hahaha, I like that pun). So Mokuba is 16. I was playing around with the idea that Mokuba might just grow up to be like his brother.

Mokuba stared at the tree, with all the wishes tied to it. It was stupid, he thought to himself. Very, very stupid. Tying paper to a tree would not help anything. Year after year, he had tied his wish to a tree and what good had it done him? Nothing. It had only led him to falsely believing something would happen. Because nothing ever did.

It was the same kind of idiotic superstition as wishing on birthday candles. A charred, melted piece of wax and cotton would do nothing to improve any situation. It was a simple chemical reaction, not a magical equation.

No, Mokuba did not believe in miracles.

And yet, the time of year had come around again. It was the kind of thing that a normal child anticipated, but Mokuba could not see why. Of what importance was the day on which a person was born? There was no significance in the date. He silently walked on, ignoring the tree and returning to the Kaibacorp building.

When he stepped inside, his brother happened to be at the table. He was eating and working at the same time, staring intently at the papers before him. "Hello, Mokuba. Happy Birthday," he said without looking up.

"Thank you," Mokuba replied in the same cold tone Seto had used on him. Time had hardened him to be a mirror of his brother. His black hair had been hacked back to neck length, and he had grown taller, as well. He did his best to ignore Seto as he headed up to his room. He had work to do, too.

The grey walls stared at Mokuba as he pulled out his schoolwork. It was trivial and childish, but he told himself he had to do it anyway. The first assignment on his list was math, the easiest subject. It didn't require any thought at all, just robotic answers in numbers. Math had no feelings, no emotion, and it made the work easy, if tedious.

"Sine, Cosine, and Tangent," Mokuba read to himself. It was simple. With the lengths of the sides of the triangles supplemented, it was nothing but writing numbers.

In a matter of minutes, Mokuba moved on to harder problems. He opened his desk drawer to find a calculator, as he was in no mood for mental math. To his surprise, he could not find one. He rummaged through the organized mess of papers, looking and looking, but only finding what he was not searching for.

He was about to go and get a calculator from Seto when he came across something that stopped him in his tracks. It was a photograph, faded by time. It depicted a sea-green haired boy of 9 or 10, dressed in a white uniform.

Mokuba stared at the face he had tried so hard to forget. The name meant nothing; it had been erased from the computer's memory and, Mokuba thought, his as well. So why, why was everything coming back now?

Tears almost came, but Mokuba forced them back and managed to hold them at bay. Tears were of no use to him either. However, the picture dug into him and unearthed a piece of his heart that had not seen light for a long, long time. The air stung, like an open sore. And for the first time in many years, Mokuba felt vulnerable.

Why did so many people prefer this feeling? Why did so many risk such pain on flimsy relationships that could tear at any minute? Why was the human heart so fallible?

Mokuba tried to tear his eyes from the photo, but couldn't. It was as if some magnetic, some electrical, some gravitational force was drawing him to it that Mokuba could not explain. And yet, the longer he stared, the more he wanted to give in to that aching piece of his heart.

Love hurts, Mokuba thought, then laughed ludicrously at the cliché. Was that all love was? A stupid cliché? Mokuba tried to tell himself so, but a part of him wouldn't believe it.

No, love couldn't make that much sense. Love, like so many other human emotions, didn't make any sense. Maybe that was what love was for, Mokuba thought. To confuse people.

Maybe that's why he had barred love away, Mokuba mused. Maybe he was just confused…

It was true, Mokuba had a wish. A wish that he had buried a long, long time ago. And when no one was looking, Mokuba dug it up and tied it to that tree.


End file.
